


Cereal Thrillers

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BOXES, Body Image, Cereal, Comedy, Could Be Considered Meta, Crack, Crush, Curses, Food, Humor, Identity Issues, If You Squint A Lot, Inanimate Objects, Like A Lot A Lot, M/M, Magic, Metaphors, Ridiculous, Romance, SO MUCH CRACK I CANNOT EVEN, Snorfle-Inducing, Subtext, Surreal, THEY'RE CEREAL BOXES OKAY, Teenagers, The Author is Clearly Insane, Unrequited Lust (Or Is It?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Derek are cereal boxes. In love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cereal Thrillers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [positivitywolf](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=positivitywolf), [ladywinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/gifts).



> For **positivitywolf** and **ladyw1nter** \- one for [inspiring](http://positivitywolf.tumblr.com/post/33631778944), and the other for [enabling](http://ladyw1nter.tumblr.com/post/33638410428/cereal-boxes-oh-you-did-not-just-go-there). Seriously, none of this is my fault.

* * *

 

“Oh, of  _course_  you’re a goddamn manly box of boxiness, full of tasteless-but-presumably-nourishing crap. Like, if it doesn’t taste good, it’s got to be good for you. Right? Wrong.”

“Shut up,” Derek grumbles, even though Stiles can’t figure out where the heck his mouth is, unless that horrible, flat little scratch under his logo is supposed to be his mouth. It’s got two fangy bits sticking out from both ends, anyway. “You’re a variety pack of kids’ cereal.”

“Uh, at least I’d make people happy? You’d just make anyone who ate you miserable. Like yourself. Mister Nutri-Grain. Ugh. Anybody with half a tastebud would run away from you in a supermarket aisle.”

“You’re full of enough sugar to give a kid a cavity. And who the hell wants their cereal to ‘snap, crackle and pop’?”

“Or bend and snap? Heh.”

“You’re a variety pack because you have identity issues - ”

“Hey!” Stiles yelps. “My potential bisexuality and/or pansexuality is not up for discussion! It’s half your fault, anyway!”

Derek stares at him.

Or, at least, Stiles  _assumes_  Derek’s staring at him, through the dark, reddish slits where the tear-here-to-open lines should be. He wonders what his own box-face looks like. “Um. Then again, it could just be my ADHD? It’s probably my ADHD, the whole variety thing. Certainly not any sexual proclivity, or - ”

“Who’s the other half?”

“Danny? Don’t kill him!”

“Why would I?”

“Yeah,” Stiles croaks, around a dry, bitter throat. (Technically, he doesn’t  _have_  a throat, but the cereal inside him feels super-dry, like jagged pebbles clogging him up.) “Why would you?”

Derek radiates a broody sort of potential violence for the next couple of minutes, which would be hilarious, coming from a cereal box, if Stiles weren’t simultaneously wishing that  _Stiles_  wasn’t a cereal box, so that he could, like, crawl away in abject humiliation. Or maybe just fall off the table. Maybe if he tips himself back enough, he’ll fall to his death? And then no one will ever sample his puffy Rice Krispies or his glittery Frosties or his super-sweet Coco Pops or his colorful Froot Loops. He’ll die a cereal virgin. Great. Just like his human self.

“Look, man - box - man-box - werebox? Werecereal?”

“Stiles,” Derek growls.

“Dude, then. Look, dude, I ain’t gonna lie, even as a box of cereal, you’re like the tighty-whities of the cereal world. Um, the tighty-whities on a faux construction guy in a gay magazine. You’re hot, okay? All broad and muscular and - if cereal boxes had sex-parts, I might be having an embarrassing reaction, here. But can we put all that awkward-teenage-boner nonsense past us and focus on the wonderful fact that soon, Deaton will break the curse and we’ll be back to our human versions, and then, you can avoid me as strenuously as you please without being trapped with me on Scott’s breakfast-table, between two bowls of suddenly-threatening milk?”

“Scott isn’t going to eat us.” But even Derek sounds uncertain about that.

“Yeah, Scott-the-hungry-teenage-werewolf won’t eat food when it’s put right in front of him. Uh-huh. Deaton better tell him about the curse, pal, or we’ll both be cereal-sushi swimming in Scott’s stomach in about, oh, nine minutes. It’s almost breakfast-time.” Stiles gulps, nervously. “And I don’t think humans can hear us. Remember when Mrs. McCall came out here to pour the milk and make herself coffee? We were yelling our heads off, but - ”

“Scott has superhuman hearing. He might hear us.”

“Scott also has weed. He might just think he smoked too much of it. And we’re hallucinations. Or something. Listen, while we’re stuck communicating only to each other in cereal-speak, allow me to apologize in advance for talking your ears - flaps? Box-flaps? - off until Deaton solves this. I’m too fucking terrified, here. Dying by being literally consumed by my best friend  _was_  something that had occurred to me when Scott became a werewolf, but I didn’t think it’d  _happen_.”

“It won’t happen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Deaton will warn him about it any minute, now. He won’t leave our survival to chance.”

“Or our part-survival? Seriously, Derek, what if Scott only eats my Froot Loops? Will that be the same as eating my, um, my brain?”

“You think your Froot Loops are your brain,” Derek says, flatly.

“Hey, a bit of honesty never hurt anyone. Each one of your depressingly uniform, chunky, iron-rich Nutri-Grains is obviously just another muscle in your bulging musculature, so - ”

“I’m not all muscle,” says Derek, almost defensively.

“Really? Could’ve fooled me. Or what about my Rice Krispies? Will that rob me of my sass? My sense of humor? ’Cause I gotta say, that’s my best feature. Or my Special K. That’s my first kiss, isn’t it? Will I lose my first kiss without even being kissed? That’s tragic.”

“Stiles - ”

“Or what if Scott eats my Frosties? Will I no longer have my charmingly shiny eyes, all warm and golden and wide and pretty? Or will I no longer have my sugary lips?”

Derek’s box is turning a weird color. Flushing darker, somehow. Shit, Stiles isn’t actually killing him with randomness, is he? It’s been known to happen, before. Once, in pre-school, the pudgy, male kindergarten teacher had even been rushed to the hospital. At the time, Stiles had thought it was all his fault.

“I’ll, um. I’ll shut up? Maybe?”

“Definitely.” Derek’s voice is oddly hoarse.

Maybe cereal boxes can get laryngitis, too. Although, if anyone should be getting laryngitis, around here, it oughta be Stiles. He’s the one who’s been talking enough to give himself a sore -

“Holy shit!” shouts Scott, barreling into the kitchen. “Guys, is that - are you - is that - ”

“Yes,” sighs Stiles, “it’s us.”

Scott just squints at him, still holding his cell-phone to his ear. “Whoa. That variety pack just snapped, crackled  _and_  popped. It’s Stiles, all right.”

“See?” says Stiles. “Some people like that sort of thing.”

Derek grunts.

“And the Iron Man cereal just… I dunno what that sound was, but - yeah.” Scott keeps talking into the phone, eyes still glued to the cereal boxes on his table. “Yeah, Doc. I - I won’t eat ’em, ’course I won’t eat ’em! I mean, I was wondering when Mom got us new cereal, she hasn’t gotten me a variety pack since I was, like, eight, _man_ , I’ve missed those - ”

Stiles feels a frisson of alarm.

“But I won’t eat Stiles!”

“You said you wouldn’t attack me, either,” Stiles mutters. “And then came the full moon.”

“I won’t eat you, buddy,” Scott assures Stiles, fervently, like he understood what Stiles just said, and then he turns back to the phone. “Uh-huh. So I’ll just - bring them over, then? Milk with mountain ash? What? Oh, I - fine. Um, do you need bowls? To, um, pour them into? ’Cause I’ve got some - nah, ’s cool, no prob. You’ve already got dog bowls, huh? The ones you feed the pets with?”

Derek glowers.

“Wow, Derek-box is, like, doing something. Freaky. With its - are those  _eyebrows_?” Scott gapes.

“You still have your eyebrows,” Stiles snickers at Derek. “Oh, god. Even though they’re totally worked into the box’s design, they're still - heh.”

“I thought you said you were shutting up.”

“You thought wrong. Heh!”

“They’re talking to each other!” Scott exclaims, excitedly. “I think. I. Yeah, I’ll be there. Soon. ’Kay, bye.” And so saying, Scott just… scoops them both off the table, tucking each of them under one arm, and takes off for the door.

“Scott?” Mrs. McCall’s voice echoes from upstairs. “Have your cereal before you go!”

“Oh, I’m havin’ it, all right! All of it!” Scott calls back, and then grins at the boxes in his arms before bounding out the driveway and down the road, toward Deaton’s clinic.

“Just so you know,” Stiles says, his cereal getting jostled around inside him sickeningly, like the world’s worst roller-coaster ride, “when we turn back, we will never speak of this again.”

“Agreed,” grits Derek, no doubt also struggling not to throw up in Nutri-Grains all over Scott’s nice-if-by-nice-you-mean-horrible T-shirt.

Stiles experiences a moment of vengeful solidarity, which is about as oxymoronic as feelings can get, since people shouldn’t be able to feel a sense of solidarity with each other while  simultaneously feeling vengeful.

Then again, people shouldn’t get turned into boxes of cereal, either.

Go figure.

**Author's Note:**

> SOME VISUAL AIDS…
> 
> STILES:
> 
> DEREK: 
> 
> YOU’RE WELCOME. :D


End file.
